[pianotech] Imagine

[Susan Kline]

Dear Baffled,

It's certainly not for the money. Nor is it to "appease" someone's demands.

It's a different game than the "long big grand" game, but not an 
unworthy one, IMO. It calls for ingenuity. Make someone's day! Play the 
ball where it lies! Get that little hummer up and doing in no uncertain 
terms, in a way which will keep it humming along for eons! And all in a 
short enough time that you don't need to develop a martyr complex, and 
for a price your soon-to-be-eternally-devoted customer can manage. Save 
the ship! Even if it's a little rowboat! And then there's the slightly 
clandestine joy of succeeding where so many others have failed, or just 
turned up their noses, the ignorant helpless conceited louts!

So, in the unlikely event you book work on one of these wrecks by 
mistake, what are you going to do? Waste your time going to the house by 
doing nothing once there? Disappoint the humble but hopeful owner, who 
isn't really expecting a miracle, but hoping against prior experience to 
get one anyway? Leave the little thingee sitting there in its dust and 
misery, with the pedal hanging down like the tongue of a dead animal, 
when some stupid five-minute epoxy and a little deft innovation can get 
it up and running in fifteen minutes?

Have you watched any McGyver episodes lately? (Netflix carries them ...) 
Fixing these tiny wounded warriors is a little closer to McGyver's world 
than to a world-class piano designer's.

sssssssssssssssssssnnnnn

P.S. Putting the bridge pins in a split bridge here, and there, and over 
there (wherever works best) is not a SHABBY repair! It's a highly 
practical but unsightly repair. If done right, it should hold up to 
whatever comes its way for decades, certainly far longer than the 
original geometrically-challenged bad factory workmanship. Luckily it's 
out of sight. The other option is the landfill. That's even more unsightly.



On 11/11/2010 9:06 PM, Ron Nossaman wrote:
>
> I wonder about the current thread on split bridge repair. Is it worth 
> fixing or not? If so, wouldn't you make a new bridge? It's easier than 
> recapping in situ, and a real fix. The other options are, at best, 
> lesser approaches. I confess, I don't understand the attitude that the 
> piano is absolute junk, but the owner wants it fixed, and has no 
> money, so the tech should do the shabbiest repair possible to appease 
> a customer who has no idea what the choices made actually mean, as 
> long as the tech can make a buck doing it. Is there no line beyond 
> which NO is the right answer? Can't we decline to do junk repairs on 
> junk pianos as a matter of professional pride and ethics, or are these 
> outdated concepts when a check is to be had? I understand that we 
> don't always have the luxury of high level choice, but shouldn't we at 
> least try to appear to be possessed of professional standards to some 
> degree? Or is it all just the chance to generate income, regardless of 
> how? How does this serve either us, or our profession in the long run? 
> I read all sorts of whining that we aren't taken seriously as true 
> professionals, and we don't get the pay we deserve as such, followed 
> by suggestions for repairs that anyone aspiring to professional status 
> would, or at least should, have nothing to do with.
>
> Baffled, long and often,
> Ron N
>
>